Write-first design

Most design teams decide things in Figma. A direction gets explored and refined, and somewhere in that process it quietly becomes the plan. Nobody agreed to it. It simply accumulated. We work the other way round. The decision gets written down before anyone opens a design file. Writing is the first design tool. The pixels come later. We call this write-first, build later. It runs through the whole design process, and it changes what design feels like to do. Why writing comes first A mockup is a persuasive object. It looks resolved even when the thinking underneath it is not. You can spend a week on a screen and never once state what problem it solves. A paragraph cannot hide. Write "we believe this change will improve clarity, because users currently misread the loading state", and every part of that sentence is now arguable. Someone can challenge the belief, or the evidence for it. That is the point. You want the argument exposed while it is still cheap to change. Writing also…